Washington, August 22 (ANI): Researchers have identified a common cause of all forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's disease, paving the way for effective therapies.
"This opens up a whole new field for finding an effective treatment for ALS," said senior author Teepu Siddique, M.D., the Les Turner ALS Foundation/Herbert C. Wenske Professor of the Davee Department of Neurology and Clinical Neurosciences at Northwestern's Feinberg School and a neurologist at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine researchers identified the breakdown of cellular recycling systems in the neurons of the spinal cord and ALS patients that results in the nervous system slowly losing its ability to carry brain signals to the body's muscular system.
Without those signals, patients gradually are deprived of the ability to move, talk, swallow and breathe.
"We can now test for drugs that would regulate this protein pathway or optimize it, so it functions as it should in a normal state."
The discovery of the breakdown in protein recycling may also have a wider role in other neurodegenerative diseases, specifically the dementias. These include Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia as well as Parkinson's disease, all of which are characterized by aggregations of proteins, Siddique said.
The study has been published in the journal Nature. (ANI)
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